games

A few weeks ago the subject of Dungeons and Dragons games came up. Our daughter was interested in the open-endedness of the game. We decided to try a board game of that type, because it would be simpler than having a dungeon master, though that confines the flow of the game to a set path. I ordered "Wrath of Ashardalon" and we have been playing it the last two weekends. Usuallt just the two if us, especially since the wife was out of town. The games take about 90min to 2h. According to the rules, the characters start over as new characters at the beginning of each adventure, except the one we three started yesterday. It's a three-part campaign and we keep the characters improving through each part. We played the first segment yesterday and might do the second today. I think the second and third are going to seem easy because we second-level characters going into them, but the adventure rules and monster abilities stay the same.

When I was thinking about movement, I pulled out my old tai ji videos, which are VHS. When I tried to play them and others in the VHS/DVD-combo player and recorder, the player screeched and the video was wavy and noisy and the audio was distorted. I tried different tapes, but finally decided to buy another one. Not new, because who makes VHS machines any more, even if it does have DVD too? When we (I can't do it by myself with one good arm) set up it, I found the VHS tapes and player had the same problem, plus the supposedly digital tuner didn't put up any channels. I set an email to the seller that it wouldn't work for me. As a played with the tapes, I noticed the quality was improving and eventually they would all play well, except for one, which I threw away. The others I transferred to DVD, mostly with that "new" machine, but as an experiment, I had the wife switch out the players. After some experimenting like with the other, VHS quality improved like with the "new" one. Hmmm. Nothing really wrong with it. The belts probably stiffened up from disuse and needed working.

This morning my wife boxed up the "new" one and she'll mail it back tomorrow, because even though the VHS works, the lack of digital channel support is a killer.